A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain #1)(31)

Unfortunately, I can’t stop worrying about Ava. Even with a two-year contract, I still feel like I’m feeding her to the sharks.

She isn’t worried, though. This is what she wants. So I ask the Sharpes to put three weeks’ vacation—annually—into the deal memo. “And three personal days,” I add.

Sharpe gives me a dark look, but he adds it to his notes.

When the meeting is adjourned, I go looking for Ava, because I need to give her the good news. At least that’s what I tell myself.

I’m not just seeking her out because she looks hot in her red dress, or because I can’t stop remembering the look in her eye last night when she was telling me how much she missed me.

Nope. This is strictly a business visit.

I find Ava sitting at her desk. She’s holding something under a carefully aimed task lamp. As she patiently manipulates the object, her frown reminds me of the girl I met when she was only twenty-one, squinting while she drew an exquisite owl or a fox onto her latest art project.

“Hey there,” I say with as much nonchalance as a guy can muster for the only girl he ever loved. “I have some good…” The sentence dies on my tongue when I realize what she’s holding. I sputter, “W-where did you get that?”

She lifts her pretty eyes, and they’re confused. “The mug?”

I nod, my eyes still glued to it.

“Found it in a box of old crockery that someone stashed in a storage locker. And I loved it so much that I took it home with me. There’s a saying painted on the bottom—on the inside. It says—”

“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides,” I say, my voice hoarse.

Ava makes a noise of pure surprise. “How did you…” She looks down at the mug, and swallows hard. “Wait. Was this yours? It looks handmade.”

I nod. And then I tell her something that I never managed to tell her before. “My mother made it. She loved pottery.”

Ava gapes at me. Then she looks down at the broken thing in her hand. “Your dead mother made this for you. And I broke it.”

I take another deep breath and try to shovel a heap of emotions back down my gullet. “Ava, this isn’t on you. But can you show me where you found it? There were two more of them—in different colors—one for each of my brothers. With…”

“…different sayings inside,” she finishes my sentence. “Yeah. Come on.” She shuts off the light and grabs her coat off a hook. “Follow me.”





Fifteen minutes later, I’m toting a cardboard box out of a storage shed behind an employee apartment building. “Up here,” Ava says, leading me up the exterior staircase to the second floor. “I have the other two mugs in my kitchen.”

I follow her upstairs, shamelessly admiring the view of her backside. “I used to come up here in high school,” I tell her. “There was a ski tech living on the second floor who was willing to buy beer for me and Weston. He probably overcharged us.”

Ava looks over her shoulder to give me a tiny smile as she reaches the second-floor walkway. She passes two doors and stops in front of the third one. “I still can’t get over the fact that your mother was a potter.” She unlocks the door to her unit, but before she steps inside, she gives me an appraising look. “Seems like something you might have mentioned that day we met in pottery class.”

“Oh, I know it.” I follow her inside the apartment. “But there I was, sitting next to a very pretty girl who was better at pottery than I was. Didn’t seem like something to brag about.”

She frowns. “That class lasted a month, Reed. And it never came up.”

She’s right, of course. “I just didn’t want to be a sad sack. I didn’t want to lay my tale of woe at your feet. What was I supposed to say? ‘My mother was a potter. She made our home amazing. Then she died, and my father won’t even say her name.’”

“That would have been a good start.” Ava throws her coat on a chair. “Sit down.” She goes into the kitchen, opens the fridge, and pulls out a gallon of apple cider. Then she retrieves the other two mugs—a yellow one and an orange one—from a cupboard. “Hot cider?”

“Yes, please.” As much as I do not want to talk about my dead mother—and my own questionable behavior—I’m enjoying this invitation to see where Ava lives.

I set the box down on the coffee table and sit on the sofa.

The apartment is startlingly nice. It almost makes me feel better about leaving her here under questionable new management. The living room is small but comfortable, with a charcoal-colored couch and a leather chair. It’s very civilized—much nicer than that dude’s bachelor pad that I used to visit in high school.

She’s decorated the small space carefully. There are bookshelves and throw pillows with… Hold up. The pillows have mountain goats drawn on them.

“Ava, are these your drawings?” I ask, lifting a pillow to show her. “I saw this in my hotel room.” There are drawings on the parking-lot signs, too. Hell, her mark is all over this property. “This is you, right? I’m not crazy? Your art is all over Madigan Mountain.”

“Yep.” She’s stirring cider in a pot on the stove. “And I’m starting to think Sharpe is going to wipe it all away and put golden snakes on everything instead.” She makes a face.